Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The last time I was at Sephora I was instantly drawn to the new display for the Stila Magnificent Metals Eyeshadows. These are an insanely metallic and shiny eyeshadow formula with a sort of flake texture that is sort of sponge/cream finish. Very unique and unlike anything I've ever experienced before! I knew immediately that I needed to do swatches of the entire line for you all.

A couple things about application. From my experience (using my finger) these were easier to use the more liquid-like they were. The formula of these is identical between shades but as these come with a tiny vial of liquid primer it is reccommended to drop the liquid into the shadow pots. The amount you add the more liquidy they become. The easiest ones to use were the shades that people had added quite a bit of the primer too but not so much that the shadows became a runny goop. Also though it would be a pain due to the screw-top packaging I can totally see why they chose it because you wouldn't want to have the primer dry-out in the shadows between uses- it would be a huge waste of the tiny primer vial.

I didn't notice any other differences between shades other than the emerald shade stains like crazy. Which is sad because all the other shades were fine and I loved the emerald colour.

These retail for an insane $42 Canadian each (at Sephora) which includes one mini primer vial, one eyeshadow pot and one metal pan to mix in (which isn't really necessary in my opinion).

I swatched these two ways for you all, first on my fingers and then on my arm. Enjoy!

As you can see from the swatches these are difficult to apply evenly. Like I mentioned before it was easier to apply these more evenly when they were wetter (such as with metallic merlot and comex platinum). All shades have the same sort of intense metallic finish, there truly isn't a difference I could see between shades as there sometimes is in ranges.

Overall I think these are really neat. I do think they'd take practise to use effectively as the flakes seem to go everywhere and a brush may be a better option than fingers- you may have to do some experimentation. At the price I'd put them as a luxury item to splurge on but if a shade really calls out to you I can see these making a statement look easily.